Täydellinen suklaapiirakka
150g voita
150g taloussuklaata
3 kananmunaa
2 dl sokeria
2 tl leivinjauhetta
1/2 dl Black Ruby portviiniä
1/2 kaakaojauhetta
2 1/2 dl vehnäjauhoja
1 1/5 dl puolukoita
Lämmitä voi ja suklaa kattilassa vesihauteessa. Vispaa munia ja sokeria niin maan saatanasti. Lisää sössöön suklaa-voi, portviini ja kuivat aineet siivilän läpi (varovasti sekoittaen ettei lässähdä.) Lopuksi puolukat sekaan (sulata ne ensin.) Paista siinä keltaisessa vuoassa uunin alaosassa, 175ssä asteessa noin puoli tuntia. Huitaise jääkaappiin, ja sillä aikaa tee kuorrutus
50g suklaata
50g voita
1/2dl kaakaojauhetta
1/2 dl portviiniä
niin paljon tomusokeria että tulee kuorrutemaista.
Levitä kuorrute jäähtyneen kakun päälle. Ripottele vielä kaakaojauhetta, ja pinnalle paljon jäisiä puolukoita. Syö kahvin ja pitkän elokuvan kanssa alkuiltapäivästä.
“… also raspberry leaves, dried white clover, yarrow for bleeding, dried blueberries, dried wild strawberries, liquorice root, nettle and …something mom bought from Turkey, I can’t really make out what it is but it tastes a bit like basic yellow label but more coffe-y, it’s actually supposed to be boiled, and this something I bought from Russia, you can add it to another tea and it turns fruity… and these green tea flowers that I never dear to use because I only have two and they were darn expensive… random teabags I’ve got from my pen pals… and two kinds of coffee. And cocoa.”
(Source: explosionsinspace, via jayfromspace)
Making berry juice
This is the traditional Finnish juice mix, made from the most readily available berries here. Its idea is to first make a strong clear juice concentrate with as little as possible water for easy storing, and then another, less full juice for more immediate consumption.
Blackcurrants and blueberries bring the real flavour and flavonoids to it, and red currants are added for volume, for they grow plentifully everywhere and are easy to pick. The combination of course depends on your location and how much berries you have each year - if you have only little blueberries one year, there’s no sense to kill them with freezing or boiling. Or if strawberries, apples, or cloudberries are everywhere one year, juice them even if you’d normally just eat them fresh or frozen… I like juices, they are easy and cheap vitamins to consume every day, and I never seem to get bored of them like I eventually do with jams and plain frozen berries. I often make juices from the last years berries that haven’t vanished from my parents freezer during the winter, to make room for fresh ones.
Anyway, the secret to making great juice will be experimenting with different combinations, but most grandmothers claim that it’s best to always mix sweet and sour, and different colours, to make it full bodied. Lingonberries and rowan berries have acids that will help the preservative to keep, but they have a strong taste that easily overrides the more sophisticated wild berries. Some also add secret ingredients, like herbs, ginger or honey. Fish them recipes out of your elders (and tell me too!)
Depending on how clear you keep your equipment and how well you manage to seal the bottles the juice might keep in the fridge until spring even without sugar, but I wouldn’t risk it. If you really aren’t into that sugar thing and have a large freezer, you can of course make you juice in small batches, sweeten it with stevia or other sweetener of you choice for taste, and start drinking it immediately, making more when you run out.
Gardeners juice
Fill your clean glass bottles/ jars with boiling water, and put the caps, a funnel, your scoop and all the spoons you’re going to use in the water too. You can also place them in the oven in 100c to disinfection them.
Fill your biggest pot with
1/3 of blueberries
1/3 of red currants
1/3 of blackcurrants
+ a coffee cup of lingonberries for preservative qualities
+ another cup of raspberries, strawberries or whatever sweet berry you dear to part with, for extra flavour
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Autumn is my favourite season, not least because it involves the harvest and other delightful preparations for the long winter. I habitually pick rowanberries each September and this year we thought we’d make berry liqueur, also known as Рябиновая наливка or rowanberry nalivka.
It is bloody easy in fact. You need some jars, a bottle or two of vodka and plenty of rowanberries. Other clear spirits might do as well, I chose Stolichnaya because it wasn’t expensive but not the cheapest one either. Fill the jars approx. 3/4 full of berries and pour vodka on them. Close the jars and keep them in room temperature for 1-2 months or so. Filter and add a 5:1 mixture of sugar and water, bottle the stuff and let it mature for as long as you want. The result should be of nice amber colour.
